Trends in Technological Advances in Food Dehydration, Identifying the Potential Extrapolated to Cocoa Drying: A Bibliometric Study

Abstract

This work presents a systematic review of the literature based on bibliometric networks structured with the VOSviewer application, which was run on different scientific databases, seeking for improvements of drying processes of food and other biomasses in rural contexts. Analyzed data reveals a growing interest on topics dealing with storage of solar thermal energy and mathematical modelling to predict properties of air, as a drying fluid in solar and hybrid dryers. Solar-biomass hybrid drying technologies that use residual heat are currently being applied. At the level of mathematical models, the literature analysis cover heat transfer mechanisms related to changes in absolute and relative humidity of the air and food biomasses. Therefore, a promissory horizon to develop a continuous dryer for cocoa beans, enabling an improvement of the final quality of dried biomass and reducing operation periods for this process in low-economy countries has been elucidated through this review.